Award winning author whose novels tend to explore the implications of oppressive societies on the lives of their inhabitants, often using his native South Africa as a backdrop. Coetzee was born in Cape Town and graduated from the University of Cape Town. From 1962-1965 he worked in England as computer programmer and did research for his thesis on the English novelist Ford Madox Ford. He then attended earned his PhD. from University of Texas at Austin; his doctoral dissertation was on the early fiction of Samuel Beckett. He has taught at various colleges and universities (SUNY, John Hopkins, Harvard, Stanford, University of Cape Town, University of Adelaide). He currently resides in South Africa.

Awards:

1977 - CNA Literary Award, 1977, for In the Heart of the Country

1980 - CNA Literary Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and Geoffrey Faber Award, all 1980, all for Waiting for the Barbarians

1984 - CNA Literary Award, Booker-McConnell Prize, and Prix Femina Etranger, all for The Life and Times of Michael K

1990 - Sunday Express Book of the Year Prize, for Age of Iron

1994-95 - Premio Modello, and Irish Times International Fiction Prize, for The Master of Petersburg